At the time of going to print, Essential Energy was still working to restore power to 97 homes and businesses, but it was hoped this would be achieved by last night.

After power was cut at 2.07pm on Thursday during wild weather, Essential Energy crews started work to replace six power poles on the main powerline to the communities.

“It literally broke both wooden and concrete power poles, and our crews are saying it looked like a cyclone had gone through,” Essential Energy’s regional manager Ben Williams said. 

Crews from Tamworth, Barraba, Armidale, Glen Innes and Quirindi worked through Thursday night and all day yesterday to restore power.

“The damage was significant and I thank our crews for the effort they put in to ensure power was restored so quickly under some very trying conditions,” Mr Williams said.

To speed up the restoration efforts, given the boggy conditions after the storm, the company also contracted two excavators and two cranes to assist. 

“The impact of this storm damage, in terms of the number of customers affected and the length of the interruption, is the worst we have seen in the Tamworth area for many years,” Ben said.

“I thank customers for their understanding and patience while we worked to restore power after the storm.”

Phones were also expected to be restored once the power came back on, Telstra Countrywide North West area general manager Mike Marom said.

He said the telecommunications company had four emergency crews on the job yesterday.

The loss of phones, he said, could be explained by the fact some of the infrastructure would have been on the damaged poles, while mobile phone base stations relied on electricity to operate and had only a four- to six-hour battery life in the event of a power failure.